When I was young, mortality seemed tremendously romantic. I left the Mountain of the Gods when I came of age, filled with youthful wanderlust and strong desire to thumb my nose at my family, though I wouldn’t have admitted it then. I wasn’t a goddess yet. Most humans think all immortals are divine, but within our pantheon, men are born gods, and only the women who marry them become goddesses.

It wasn’t until much later, after I’d married a human I loved and began to age, that I questioned the wisdom of my defection. Now, after sixty human years, mortality looms. Saulos knows my dilemma even though I have not spoken a word of it. He knows, as I pack my small satchel with a favorite brush, a pair of comfortable slippers, a bit of parchment and a well­worn quill, that I may not come back.

“Do you have a gift?” he asks, knowing I rarely think of such things. I was raised with the gods, and we don’t give gifts; we are the gift. Old habits die hard.